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For those who don’t know the tool: KIRI Engine is a cross-platform 3D scanning platform for iOS, Android and the web, combining photogrammetry, LiDAR-based capture and now, 3D Gaussian Splatting in one ecosystem. It can turn photos or video into textured 3D assets or photorealistic 3DGS scenes, with further tools for mesh conversion, retopology and PBR asset generation.
Splats arrive in the comp
KIRI Innovations has released version 1.0.0 of its Gaussian Splatting plugin for Adobe After Effects. The project is in active development, with bugs and rough edges still possible. This is therefore a production tool with an unusually attractive invoice total of zero, but not a promise that every deadline will become similarly inexpensive.
The important distinction is that this is not a new Gaussian Splat reconstruction algorithm. It does not train a scene from photographs or video inside After Effects. Instead, it brings an existing Gaussian Splat scene into the compositing environment and provides an artist-facing interface for rendering, positioning and modifying it. KIRI supplies a separate PLY importer alongside the rendering effect. The documented workflow imports a Gaussian Splat .PLY file into the After Effects project, uses that footage as the source for the KIRI_GaussianSplatting effect and displays the scene through an After Effects camera.
That distinction matters for pipeline planning. Capture, reconstruction and optimisation remain upstream tasks. Once a suitable splat has reached .PLY, however, a compositor no longer has to turn it into conventional polygonal geometry merely to make a camera move or integrate it into an After Effects shot. The plugin is essentially a bridge between a 3DGS asset and the familiar layer, effect and camera logic of an AE composition.
The actual After Effects workflow
Installation follows the traditional native-plugin route. Version 1.0.0 contains separate Windows and macOS builds. On Windows, KIRI supplies Kiri_GaussianSplatting.aex and Kiri_PlyImporter.aex; on macOS the corresponding files are Kiri_GaussianSplatting.plugin and Kiri_PlyImporter.plugin. They are copied into the After Effects Plug-ins directory and After Effects is restarted. KIRI notes that macOS may require the user to permit the plugin in the operating system’s security settings.
Inside a composition, the renderer lives on a solid layer. The user creates an After Effects camera, imports the Gaussian Splat .PLY, applies KIRI_GaussianSplatting to the solid and chooses the imported splat with the Select Footage control. The source footage itself can then remain hidden because the effect is doing the rendering. Camera animation and plugin parameters can subsequently be animated like other shot controls.
This arrangement is useful because it keeps shot construction in the host application. The plugin is designed to respond to the AE camera, so fly-throughs, orbits, pushes and reveals can be built without establishing an independent camera system in another 3D package and matching it back into After Effects. KIRI also exposes depth-of-field controls, extending that camera integration beyond simple viewpoint changes.
Alignment before art direction
KIRI separates initial scene correction from creative shot transforms. The Align section provides an anchor point, base scale and X, Y and Z rotations intended to correct a splat that arrives offset, incorrectly scaled or facing the wrong direction. The separate Transform controls then provide position, scale and rotation for normal shot placement and animation.
That separation is modest interface design rather than new rendering technology, but it is sensible production design. An artist can establish a corrected rest state and then animate the shot without mixing source-orientation fixes into the creative transform channels. Anyone who has inherited a comp containing six layers of corrective parenting may appreciate the distinction more than the descripütion can reasonably express.
The Effect section contains the main art-direction groups: Render, Crop, Splat Scale, Splat Noise, Splat Opacity, Splat Displacement and Splat Density. An Advanced section adds controls related to camera behaviour, depth of field and visibility range. These are artist-facing controls exposed directly in After Effects, rather than capabilities through an API.
Colour without leaving the comp
The Render controls can retain the captured appearance or apply a custom treatment. KIRI exposes an SH Degree control affecting how much of the captured spherical-harmonic colour response participates in the result, plus a Color Enable switch for the plugin’s recolouring system.
When custom colour is enabled, artists can define a gradient with between two and 20 colour tabs, control its influence with a ramp and position the treatment spatially using shape size and X, Y and Z controls. That makes the system more useful for motion graphics than a simple global tint would be: a treatment can occupy a particular region of the splat instead of repainting the entire capture.
The same spatial idea appears in the Crop controls. Crop defines a 3D region that hides or reveals part of the scene, and an invert control reverses which side remains visible. A compositor can therefore isolate unwanted portions of a capture or animate a geometric reveal without returning to the software that generated the splat.
Noise, displacement, opacity, density and splat-scale controls push the plugin further from pure scan playback toward motion-design treatment. KIRI describes uses including ghost fades, digital dissolves, noise distortion, displacement warps and density effects. Those are modifications of an existing splat representation, not additional reconstruction methods, which is an important boundary when evaluating what the release actually adds.
Input and output boundaries
The input format is a Gaussian Splat .PLY file. KIRI does not document direct loading of alternative 3DGS delivery formats such as .splat, SPZ or SOG for this After Effects release, so those should not be assumed to work. Likewise, the plugin documentation describes rendering the scene as part of an After Effects composition rather than exporting a newly edited 3DGS asset for another application. In workflow terms, this is primarily a finishing and shot-design endpoint for splats, not a general-purpose interchange editor.
Free means MIT here
KIRI makes the tool available for free and publishes the code under the MIT licence. The licence permits use, modification, distribution and sublicensing subject to preservation of the copyright and permission notice, and the software is supplied without warranty.
KIRI’s product documentation asks users who find the free plugin useful to consider downloading its KIRI Engine scanning application and becoming a KIRI Engine Pro user, but that is a request to support the developer rather than a licensing requirement for the After Effects plugin. The plugin should therefore not be confused with a freemium edition whose rendering features unlock only after subscribing to the scanning service.
https://github.com/Kiri-Innovation/Gaussian-Splatting-plugin-by-KIRI-Engine
https://www.kiriengine.app/3d-tools/gaussian-splatting-plugin-kiri-engine
| Product | Gaussian Splatting plugin by KIRI Engine |
| Developer | KIRI Innovations |
| Version | 1.0.0 |
| Release status | First public release, 30 July 2026; active development |
| Host | Adobe After Effects |
| Input | Gaussian Splat .PLY |
| Platforms | Windows and macOS |
| macOS build | Deployment target 11.0; universal arm64;x86_64 configuration |
| Plug-in files | Windows .aex; macOS .plugin |
| Licence | MIT open-source licence |
| Pricing | Free |
| Documentation | KIRI Engine documentation |
| Download | Official GitHub releases |
| Website | KIRI Engine 3D Tools |
